Little Daunting (a.k.a. A Guide to a Place We All See at the Start of a New Year)

So you’re off to Little Daunting.

A lot to take in for such a small village. Some might call it a hamlet though they’ve had their chance to go up and down all its paths and trails, taken in the full scale of this awe-inspiring place.

It’s hard to say what’s so intimidating about Little Daunting. All you or anyone else can really know for sure is what you see on arrival, how the village appears to you. It has been described as crammed full of towering structures, having deceptive proportions when you're stood at the road sign. This sign reads ‘welcome’ but that’s not quite the meaning conveyed. All descriptions of the place from returning travellers vary but remain at some level indecipherable and untrustworthy. You distrust your own faculties most of all.

Little Daunting messes with the head but there’s a reason why it’s called ‘Little’. Any fear you might have drains away as you tread its grass, dissipates with every echoing footstep along the modest cobbles. It’s true when they say this place doesn’t quite look the same with every hour you pass within its limits.

Whether you stay or not depends on how easily you feel settled. As such it’s rarely crowded for long.

You may or may not return from Little Daunting. This village might even break you down but know that we have all been there for a while and some of us can remember it well.

THE DICHOTOMY OF CROSSING DISTANCES (a.k.a. Setting Forth from New Year's Day)

I’ve recently been looking into Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox. To simplify it in an awkward fashion, imagine walking a distance. Say the exit of a supermarket to wherever you parked your car. Now that is a set distance with a set time but to get there you will need to reach the halfway point first. However, if you’re going to split distances in half, you might as well split that halfway point in half too, and its subsequent halfway point in half and so on and so forth. Now if you add up all those new split distances, the sum total would be infinity. After a moment’s consideration, the overall distance between the supermarket and your car becomes impossibly long.

            Now this paradox is easily refuted by mathematical thinking but that’s not what I’m concerned with today. I’m more interested in the kind of mindset where the Dichotomy Paradox is almost always a problem. In short, anxiety.

            I am an anxious person. I worry about great distances before I’ve even begun the journey. I imagine every distance beyond the footpath to town or to work is a great distance. It’s a journey fraught with potential perils at every step from genuine niggles like losing my bearings and having to rely on the kindness and accuracy of strangers, to outrageous fears like my glasses flying off my face and landing in the middle of a busy road. Like in the paradox, every step of the way contains a new obstacle and hold-up.

            Normally all it takes to get over this fear is to set about moving forward. The thing about the Dichotomy Paradox when applied to real life is that it is undermined by actually crossing the distance. Calculations and halving are all well and good but they are nothing compared to the human tendency to just get on with the task at hand. It’s really that simple and yet remains very easy to forget.

            Now perseverance is always easier when you know what’s at the end of the road, when you ultimately realise that very little will change as a consequence. You can fight back the concept of the Dichotomy Paradox if the task is something that won’t take long and won’t result in the end of a life or a way of life. In those harrowing circumstances there will be days when the Dichotomy Paradox will just tie you up in knots and paralyze you with fear. After all, the certainty of disappearance doesn’t bear thinking about.

            Nevertheless, my suggested workaround for this is to bypass the multiple potential measurements in that distance with our feet. Change is scary but sometimes we go through the motions of routine behaviour and motor memory and suddenly we're well past the problem. If there was ever really a problem to begin with.

            I would say Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox is something to think about now we’re in a new year and decade. It’s something to acknowledge and hopefully overcome.

I NEVER LIKED TWO THOUSAND AND NINETEEN (a.k.a. A Villa-knell to Mark the End of a Rather Unpleasant Year)

I never liked two thousand and nineteen

Not just an odd number but on the verge

Of a brighter twenty-twenty dream.

The year itself: dull and awkward scenes

With some tough memories I long to purge.

I never liked two thousand and nineteen.

My tired eyes have a teary sheen,

Overflowing with a desperate urge

For a brighter twenty-twenty dream.

And still how maddening time’s march now seems,

Its beat so solemn it might be a dirge.

I never liked two thousand and nineteen.

It’s become so hard to vent my spleen

For if I start, I might very well splurge

Before the brighter twenty-twenty dream.

I suppose it won’t be too long between

The years, before present and future merge.

I never liked two thousand and nineteen

But I might the twenty-twenty dream.